You might not have even heard of FriendFeed before yesterday’s announcement that Facebook had bought it. Nonetheless, it’s a pretty big deal for us rockstar bloggers — if you don’t consider yourself a rockstar blogger please move along now.

Of course I’m kidding — read on and see what the all fuss is about…

FriendFeed was my first experience with what social media experts call a lifestream — an extremely ghey-tarded moniker for the evolution of longform blogging. The idea is that if you’re active on a bunch of different sites like Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, etc. you can use FriendFeed as a central hub to collect your goings-on at those different places.

Crucial for me was the FriendFeed widget — it looks like this:

An even better version of the widget currently lives used to live at www.andrewcurrie.ca — my domain for the past ten years. I’ve been blogging here at WordPress.com since 2006 and honestly didn’t know what to do with my old home page, but FriendFeed brought it back from the dead and gave this blog a run for its money. That is, until yesterday’s news.

It’s a definite coup for Facebook, as that social network definitely needs a better search engine if nothing else. But for FriendFeed fans it’s a different story, as the future of their social network is very unclear. In fact, the best we could get is this rather empty promise from one of FriendFeed’s founders:

Obviously I can’t provide a lot of detailed plans and guarantees, but I can tell you that I’ll do my personal best to ensure that the FriendFeed users and community are treated right. I love this product too, and don’t want to see it disappear.

So what’s a rockstar blogger to do?

A lot of FriendFeed refugees are heading over to use another service called Posterous. I’ve just started using it myself and can only describe it as the opposite of FriendFeed — whereas the latter acts as an inbox for your breadcrumbs scattered all over the web, Posterous sends content to multiple sights and services automatically from a single point.

I’ll have more to say as I get up to speed with Posterous. It may end up being an interim solution for something more like FriendFeed, but as for FriendFeed itself I’m moving on.

What I’ll miss:

• The widget!
• The mobile site — as far as I know Posterous doesn’t have one.
• Autoposting to Twitter et al from Google Reader for Mobiles on Opera Mini — sharing worthy links is a big part of what I do on the internets, and the killer combo of Google Reader for Mobiles and Opera Mini saved me from the bookmarklet kludge for Opera Mini that Dennis Bournique tried to teach me (and I still don’t quite get).

And not so much:

• The friends — I did subscribe to a few notable users but really, I was only there for the widget.
• (and speaking of virtual friends) Robert Scoble, specifically — this consummate early adopter and influencer was from the start a champion and community-builder for FriendFeed; unfortunately his ignorance and arrogance on at least one topic make me wonder how much forethought goes into some of the stuff he writes.

So today marks the 25th birthday of the personal computer—yes yes, Happy Birthday to you too, Ray—call me when you’re 40, okay?

[Ahem] So as I was saying… Looking at the above photo of the first IBM PC makes me lament the lack of innovation in the basic form factor of the PC over the years… Sure, there have been many updates to the basic set-up of monitor, CPU and keyboard—you can check out PC World’s 25 Greatest PCs of all Time for proof of that. But it seems to me that there’s a lot more innovation going on these days in the design of mobile phones… Maybe because they haven’t quite been standardized yet?

At any rate, I won’t argue for a second that personal computers haven’t changed the world, but I will point out that the ones I used have definitely risen in status beyond glorified calculators and word processors thanks to a certain series of tubes…

The graphic above is linked to a much more in-depth comparison of the two; I’m writing today to report my own real-world observations after four weeks of immersion in Windows XP (and a decade of using Macs). Here’s what I’ve found:

1. Looking into a Mac display is undeniably a beautiful thing. Even with ClearType enabled in Windows XP, Mac OS X does a better job at making dots on a screen look like ink on paper.
2. Web surfing on Windows is faster. A lot faster. I don’t currently have the means to measure this, but I would say from visiting the same pages on Mac and Windows that Windows is at least twice as fast at loading up a page in any browser than a Mac.
3. There’s a ton of fantastic software available for both platforms, some commercial, a lot of it free. The best free apps, namely Firefox and Thunderbird, are available for Mac, Windows and Linux.
4. Stupid people can break a Mac just as easily as a Windows computer. I have personally witnessed someone on a Mac surrender their browser to a screenful of pop-up ads, even with the pop-up blocker turned on! As for me on Windows, so far so good—four weeks in and no malware on my Lenovo laptop… Yet.
5. Apple Computer does make nice-looking machines, but as I’ve written before on the subject I can’t exactly call them reliable.
6. (The tipping point for me) Windows computers and accessories are cheaper, as in orders of magnitude cheaper. Case in point: Apple’s WiFi Base Station currently sells for $249 CAD. By comparison there’s a LinkSys wireless router on sale right now at CompuSmart for forty bucks!
7. The whole Mac vs. PC argument is ultimately for naught, as the web has all but replaced the desktop operating system, especially with this web 2.0 stuff. But if you really want to be a computer zealot you should know that all the cool kids are using Linux—I would be too if only Ubuntu would recognize my damn wireless card!

Anyway, desktop computers are sooo late twentieth-century… Smartphones are where it’s really at!

No really… This time I mean it!

I had written previously about Outlook being the gold standard for connectivity to all manner of smartphones; that’s still true, but I have to confess that Outlook’s shiny bells and whistles momentarily blinded me to the danger of its proprietary database format for storing my precious messages. And no sooner did I publish my gushing review when Outlook gave me a warning that my ten-year archive of saved email was in danger of being corrupted!

As the saying goes, fool me once…

Thunderbird has the distinct advantage of being the only email client available for Linux, Mac and Windows. If that’s not good enough for you, here are some specific reasons why it’s better than what you’re using right now:

1. If you’re using Gmail, don’t be so smug… Big Brother is watching you!
2. If you’re using Hotmail, Yahoo! or some other web-based client, whatcha gonna do when you’re mailbox is full, or when the powers that be decide to start charging you for reading your own messages?
3. If you’re using Outlook Express for Windows or Mac, you’re just asking for trouble…
4. If you’re using Eudora, be warned that it severs the attachments from your messages and puts them in a separate directory—changing your machine or even the name of your hard drive might forever break the link between the two!
5. If you’re using Apple Mail, you’ll be disappointed that you won’t be able to search your messages from the other overpriced Macs on your network… Or easily migrate to Thunderbird when the other cool kids do it!
6. If you’re using Outlook proper, you’d better have an Exchange Server along with an IT department to clean up the mess you’re gonna make. Oh, and prepare to defend yourself against the bulk of the internet’s malicious email attacks…
7. And if you’re using Evolution, KMail or some other Linux email client you’d best get your ass out to the sauna and check on that fondue, ya damned hippie!

Okay, I’ll admit that I know little or nothing about those last two, but all my other reasons for switching to Thunderbird are valid. I really do have an archive of saved email that reaches back into the last millennium, so I speak from experience when I say this:

For once and future emails, Thunderbird is king!

What you’re looking at is a utility from Fido that syncs data from my trusty hiptop to my new PC notebook. For the first time since switching to the walled garden of the hiptop OS I now have a current and complete local copy of my address book on a computer, and it’s all thanks to Microsoft Outlook, the killer app for Windows.

In and of itself Outlook packs a powerful punch, similar to Entourage for Mac but much more secure. Instead of lumping all your critical info into a monolithic database it allows you to split it up into smaller, more manageable archives.

But here’s the knockout blow: Because Outlook is the gold standard PIM for Windows, every conceivable smart phone on the market will sync to it—BlackBerries, hiptops, Treos, this thing… With Outlook, the universe of wireless devices is your to command.

And to a mobile junkie like yours truly, that’s great news!

A funny thing happened on my way to Linux…

When I opened up my new Lenovo laptop I was surprised to find that there was no backup software included. It’s apparently a common practice with these budget machines to put that stuff on a hidden hard drive partition instead of on optical media. But that wouldn’t do for me, as I was all set to wipe the drive clean and start anew with Ubuntu. I thought it prudent though, to hold off until I had the necessary recovery software in hand, so while waiting for my backup discs from Lenovo I made do with Windows.

And it almost pains me to say this, but honestly… It’s not that bad.

I’ll be reporting more on this in the days and weeks to come, but so far I can sum things up by saying that the general clunkiness of Windows is offset by the simple fact that more apps work better with it. For example, I can now say with some certainty that web surfing with Windows is significantly faster, even when compared to a faster, more powerful Mac. I’d never have believed it, but the truth is right there in front of me every time I open a new page!

In regards to viruses, spyware and the like I’ve installed some free tools that run in the background—that, combined with some good common sense, like not clicking on an attachment in an email promising free Viagra from a Nigerian banker, seems to be working for me so far.

Now to be perfectly clear here I am not switching entirely to Windows; I still have my desktop Mac for media editing and viewing, and if Ubuntu was able recognize my new laptop’s built-in Wi-Fi card I would most certainly be running Linux instead.

Thankfully, most of the good open source software is also available for Windows, making it a little easier for me to resist the siren call of cracked commercial apps. I think the lesson here is that so long as you’ve got a good web browser and office suite your desktop OS really doesn’t ultimately matter all that much.

So with that in mind let’s consider this little foray into Windows as an opportunity to go slumming…

Before you get all judgy on me for documenting the unpacking of my new laptop, consider that this search on Flickr clearly shows an appetite out there for this kind of thing. And who am I to miss out on an internet fad?

The day before the package arrived I got a call from the courier company, who gave me the option of a morning or afternoon delivery—a nice touch.

Inside the big box were two smaller ones, along with some bags of anthrax air.

On the bottom, my Lenovo 1000 C100 Notebook. On the top, my Lenovo messenger bag.

I know you’re all dying to see the bag, so I unpacked that first. That’s right, bitches… This baby can hold one laptop and four pens!

Anyone who’s ever bought something from Apple knows what a visual treat they are to unwrap. Sadly that wasn’t the case with Lenovo, though everything looks recyclable enough…

… Except for the two styrofoam bits, which I know for a fact come with Apple notebooks as well!

My heart skipped a beat when I saw what looked like a scratch in the surface of the casing, but after successfully buffing it out with a wet cloth I figured it must have been some stray adhesive from the labels on the keypad.

And here it is, my brand-new laptop up and running with no dead pixels—you hear that, Apple? No dead pixels!

I should also point out my new machine cost about half as much as the cheapest Apple alternative, and sports a bigger screen. The only downside is that Windows is included in a hidden partition on the hard drive rather than on optical media, so I’ll have ask Lenovo how I can back up my legal version of XP before I wipe it and make a fresh start with Ubuntu…

I stand by my decision not to purchase a Dell laptop. Click here for the story behind the photo…

Recently the Blogosphere—which if you didn’t know is the amassed online ranting of middle-aged single guys with computers and too much free time, like me—uttered a collective gasp as Macintosh maven Mark Pilgrim announced his forsaking of OS X and embracing of Ubuntu Linux.

As someone who’s in the preliminary throes of the exact same switch I sat back with a designer mug-full of Fair Trade coffee and watched with great interest as Pilgrim’s post was dissected, defended and finally contextualized in the broader realm of what uber-blogger (and possibly middle-aged guy) Nicolas Carr refers to as The PC Elite.

PC Elite, eh? Hmm… I resemble that. And to you, Mr. Carr may I say that I’m flattered and almost a hundred percent in agreement with you, except for one little detail—We longtime Mac folks aren’t so much elite as we are self-loathing masochists.

(Brilliant. Thought-provoking. Genius. I don’t get it…)

Come on, admit it; deep down inside we hard-core Mac users secretly love to be left out in the cold. Back in days of old we’d gather and boast about the text adventure games we created in HyperCard, while secretly lamenting that we couldn’t open Excel spreadsheets with either Claris or AppleWorks. We’d justify this with the proclamation that Mac was the one and only choice for bohemian creative-types like us, while knowing that Windows versions of Photoshop and the like were pretty much identical was eating us up inside.

Later, we’d collectively duck for cover behind our under-performing G4 and G5 chips, as Apple would momentarily confuse our Intel enemies with some arcane floating-point processor comparison. Deep down we knew it didn’t matter, but it helped ease our buyers’ remorse from that expensive new Mac tower with the cooling fans that wouldn’t shut up.

Sadly, those days are no more. With Apple’s latest and greatest now sporting Intel chips and this whole Web 2.0 deal the harsh reality of 21st-century personal computing is now staring us square in the face—that computers are a commodity item, and most of the stuff you use them for can be done on the web, nowadays.

So what’s a self-hating computer snob to do? Enter Ubuntu. It’s promise is Linux for Human Beings, failing to realize that most human beings are too busy working, raising kids or otherwise living out their busy lives to learn the ins and outs of a brand-new operating system that doesn’t ultimately have much to offer beyond what Mac and Windows have already got.

Yet this matters not; for while the rest of you PC peons busy yourselves with your pedestrian communications and productivity, we the Linux elite will gather in darkened corners to boast of how we got our laptop’s wireless card to work with NdisWrapper, while secretly lamenting that we can’t reliably open Excel spreadsheets with Gnumeric.

(Wait a minute, you people aren’t the elite… You’re just people!)

And with this, we turn our backs on Apple. A real Mac-head couldn’t bear to spend even a few minutes in a shiny, new Apple store anyway; who are all these people, and don’t they know that the Intel MacBooks they’re lining up to buy can only run Photoshop under emulation? And if they do know, why don’t they care more about it?!

We Mac refugees must carry an additional burden—with the great unwashed switching to Mac in ever-higher numbers we’re going to get hit up a lot more for casual tech support. And while I would gladly share my custom export settings for Final Cut Pro with those who I deem worthy, I most certainly do not want to be the go-to guy when you can’t export your crap iMovie to your damn .Mac page to show off to your friends—I mean, my grad-school film theory professor would surely recoil in horror if he saw your blatant over-use of the Ken Burns effect!

Nope, the only way we can truly protect ourselves from the non-elite is to hide behind the shroud of mystery that is Linux—that way, when you ask us how to burn your iTunes music to a CD we can scare you off by suggesting you open up a Terminal window and execute a couple of command-line prompts from there!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to re-compiling my custom Linux printer driver. I’ve been working on it for over a week, and I’m due for a breakthrough anytime now…

“Ladies and gentlemen… In this corner we have the pride of America, the ugly as all get out Dell Inspiron 1300… And in this corner, the ‘holy cow!’ from the land of Mao, the Lenovo 3000 C100!”

So a funny thing happened the day after I ordered my Dell laptop. I guess I was in such a hurry to secure the discounted price that I missed one of the digits on my credit card. As a result, the order has not yet been processed.

This gives me the opportunity to consider another cheap notebook computer from Lenovo (the Chinese company that bought out IBM’s PC business last year), currently on sale at an honest to goodness brick and mortar store. I checked it out yesterday and it does look considerably less hideous then the Dell, especially around the keyboard area. Feature-wise the two are very similar, and though the Dell has a widescreen display, dual-layer DVD burner and the all-important free carrying case, the Lenovo has S-Video out, FireWire in and a free multifunction printer thrown in for free to sweeten the deal. Or, I can forgo the hassle of mail-in rebates and buy it direct from the Lenovo Canada website.

And if I do that I can also get a matching Lenovo carrying case, just not for free.